2008-03-01

Talkoot Reading List

A “Streetcar” is a passenger vehicle about the size of an urban transit bus that rolls on steel wheels over steel track. The track is often embedded into the street, so that the right-of-way may be shared by rubber-tired vehicles. An electrical contact apparatus reaches up from the roof of the Tram where it brushes along a fat copper wire strung above the track, gathering power for electric motors and coach lights. Getting from one place to another by Streetcar in a rail connected municipality is quite a lot like getting from one floor to another by elevator in a skyscraper. You wait a short time at a well-designated location, step in, ride it, then step off when you're there.

It's very convenient — what if you had to park the elevator after each use? Or what if each of us had our own individual elevator? That's absurd! The personal automobile is useful and always will be, but honestly, it doesn't scale to this many on the road at once. Traffic congestion is horrible. The collective fuel waste is outrageous! The time lost to busy idling just sitting in traffic or driving the same route day in and day out is priceless. On the Streetcar, you can read or have a face to face conversation with a fellow commuter...

Assuming that it will take a fuel shortage to make it happen... When we begin to manufacture fuel, there won't be enough for the number of cars currently on the road. If there was an alternative form of transportation and most people used it, there would be fewer cars on the road. That would make driving more enjoyable for everyone else... It would also reduce fuel demand, one factor of the Supply and Demand economic equation. Perhaps if fuel demand decreases, so will prices? If.

Another nice thing about socially shared transportation is that costs are carried by the commonwealth collective, aka, the government of, by, and for the People, where money is allegedly spent according to laws, not men... And so with this deal, provided that capacity planning is on track, as demand increases, the price carried to the individual actually decreases. Or we could leave it in the supposedly capable hands of a large capitalist corporate entity and let them determine the price. Or?

What it comes down to is that what really needs to happen is for humanity to quickly convert to technologies that are compatible with life. How quickly can it be done? Have you ever heard the one about “somebody else's job”? Tired of producing air pollution everywhere you go? Tired of being part of traffic congestion? Tired of using more fuel than is truly necessary? Tired of being dependant on fossil fuels? Tired of contributing to resource contention that can lead to warfare between nations? Who's job is it to solve these problems? Who's job is it to help implement them? Why join the military when there are solutions available that do not involve killing other people? Why not instead join forces here at home to grid our cities with Streetcar rails powered by wind and solar energy?

Below is a reading list with things pertinent to an upcoming article containing some ideas that I have been incubating regarding socially-shared transportation and the fuel problems. I have some relatively concrete and detailed solutions in mind that I still plan to write about, on a future occasion. Please read at least a few clicks deep into the following mesh; I've got to read them also, it'll take maybe a week at an hour or two a day...